FantasyFan · 25 November 2003 · Chapter 1: Shadow
OOoo! Oooo! Is it Gandalf come to the rescue? How much is he going to interfere despite his restrictions? Was it hard to come up with five names that ended in Thorn? What are the girls called? Are these fallohides the leaders of the little people of this area? Are some of the rest Stoors or Harfoots? What's going on at the Berry's? Exactly where are they living? How long ago is it - just before the founding of the Shire? Were you thinking of the spot in the Two Towers movie where the orc says, "What about their legs - they don't need their legs"? *bouncing in chair* I'm so happy a new story has started, I feel like little-Pip after too many honey-cakes! (Or maybe I've spent too much time listening to Elijah and Dom's "song" over the last 24 hours - http://www.eskimo.com/~allegro/group/pandemoniumfromamerica_-_half_fling.mp3 for a giggle.)
Author's reply
I will answer those questions which are not spoilers. However, you make me think that perhaps I need a prologue to let people know what is going on. I don't have my notes from hobbit history handy, but the original three groups of hobbits lived East of the Misty Mountains (in the mists of history) and each migrated separately. The Harfoots were the first to cross the mountains, settling, I think, in the area of Weathertop (am going out on a limb, pulling a date and a geographic location from memory, always risky, that) around T.A. 1050. I forget about the Stoors, though they're in my notes. The Fallohides crossed the Misty Mountains about 100 years after the Harfoots. Therefore, this story is set around T.A. 1150, give or take a year or three. Dates are approximate (brain is fuzzy), but if you look at the Chronology in the Appendices you will find what I am referring to. Bree was founded around 1300 by representatives of all three groups, I think. The Shire was founded in 1601 by Marcho and Blanco (or is it Marco and Blancho? I always have to look that up). So what you saw in chapter 1 is the group "Fallohide" that Tolkien referred to in his "About Hobbits". They are living in Greenwood the Great, not far from the Western edge of the forest, some ways south of the Old Forest Road (if you look at "The Atlas of Middle-earth" you'll see they were between Dol Guldur and Thranduil's caverns). Since Marcho and Blanco were Fallohides, and the Tooks and Brandybucks were descended from them as well, I thought I'd follow their line from just before the mountain crossing through important points in their family history. And, no, I actually wasn't consciously thinking of that spot in the Two Towers, but it does sound that way.